


don't leave me here in the dust

by Yisel



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Post Season 1, but its mainly just them needing each other, even if it aint exactly healthy, like it alludes to it, not really romantic?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 09:29:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8244403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yisel/pseuds/Yisel
Summary: She’s taken about four steps when he says, with pure supplication in his voice, “Kate, please don’t leave me. Please don’t.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> I just caught up on this show so obviously the first thing I felt compelled to do was write an angst-filled sethkate fic at one am. hopefully some of you like it and leave a comment if you do. It's greatly appreciated.

       She tries to leave him after three weeks on the road.

   
      They spend their nights in shitty motel after shitty motel, not really doing anything besides trying to survive the next moment. Trying not crumbling beneath the weight of their grief.

  
      Seth begins to plan a score on the second week when they’re in a shit-hole town three hours from the border. It’s the house of some old man that was rumored to have a small fortune in his basement. Well that’s what Seth was told while he was drowning his sorrows at the local bar. Kate knew it sounded too good to be true. Since when had luck been on their sides recently?

  
      But Seth was desperate to get a semblance of his old life back, needing some stability after the world chucked sanity out the window. So he threw himself into planning the, “Greatest fucking robbery this piece of shit town will ever hear about.”

  
      Robbing an old man didn’t exactly sound great to her, but she too just needed to stop thinking about everything. About killing her father, abandoning her brother to his fate, the broken expression Seth always wore when he thought she wasn’t looking.

  
      Kate actually spends most of her time actively trying not to look at him. It just hurts too much.

  
      Seth’s a little reckless in his planning. Even Kate, who had never robbed anyone or anything, knew that he left too many variables open to chance which was just asking to get caught.

  
      However, when she brings this to his attention he shuts her down so quickly she barely has the chance to finish her sentence. “We’re gonna be fine, Kate. We’re gonna fucking walk out of there like we just borrowed a cup of sugar from the guy.”

  
      But of course, since she has the crappiest luck in the world, the old man turns out to be very good at guarding his crap. Seth gets a shot in the arm and Kate ducks narrowly to avoid a bullet to the head. While unfortunate, that all would’ve been fine if the stuff they grabbed didn’t turn out to be completely useless.

  
      “What kind of guy obsessively stocks and guards Monopoly money?” Kate asks in disbelief as she stares into the open bag in her lap. It’s bizarrely filled to the brim with rolls upon rolls of game board money.

  
      At the sound of her words Seth stops the car suddenly and the seat belt she always made sure to wear pressed roughly into the skin of her collarbone. He doesn’t even bother taking a look for himself or say anything to her before getting out of the car.

  
      Kate watches him just stand in front of the car, looking into the night sky as if it could answer whatever prayer he was to offer it. His shoulders moving in a way that suggested laughter, but she knew better. This was the image of a man breaking apart.

  
      Seth stays like this for just a little longer before driving them off to another shit-hole town.

  
      She doesn’t ask what he prayed about.

 

 

      They never leave this motel they’re at unless it’s for food or, on Seth’s part, to get sloppily drunk at the bar across the street.

  
      Kate goes with him on the third night he does this, needing to get out of that room that was becoming more and more like a cell to her. He shrugs his shoulders before muttering, “Just keep in line of sight.”

  
      The bar was cleaner than she had imagined and the ruffian’s from her thoughts were replaced by people just there for some sweet relief in the form of a cold one. Seth and Kate take their seats at the bar and the man behind it slides down two beer without having to be told. Smiling at the bottle; she thinks how this beer would be her first alcoholic beverage and the man she was sharing it with rarely spoke to her.

  
       Well Seth did _speak_ to her, but it was always about something inconsequential; some funny story that he’d tell her about the past while he was piss-poor drunk that made no sense out of context, an order to do something, or an angered shout whenever she tried to start a conversation that would lead to emotions he was trying so hard to bury.

       So she just sipped on the beer that tasted like urine and listened to whatever anecdote Seth had for her at the moment.

  
      Sometime later she needs to pee and lets her partner know she’s going to the ladies room. Seth nods distractedly in reply, too focused on the shot he just took to really listen to her.

  
      The restroom is, like the bar outside, cleaner than she had expected. Still has the gross piss-and-shit sent that the restrooms in these joints had, but she has seen a whole lot worse to let the scent bother her.

  
      She was washing her hands in the sink when she hears the door swing open behind her and in the mirror she sees a man standing the doorway.

  
     “Oh sorry I didn’t realize the door didn’t lock.” Kate quickly wipes her hands on her jeans to dry them and tries to walk around the man to exit the small restroom. He doesn’t move.

  
      “Well that’s just fine, princessa. I thought a girl like you could use some company.”

  
      She doesn’t even get the chance to reply before the door is swung open again and Seth hauls the man out of the bathroom by the back of his shirt.

  
      “What the fuck you doing, pendenjo?” The man releases himself from Seth’s grip and starts swinging at him.

  
      Kate faintly hears the bartender yelling at them to take it outside as Seth retaliates.

  
      Now Kate has seen Seth kill people. She’s seen him get into fights and shoot at them. But she’s never seen him quite like this.

  
      His face is a mask of cold, dark fury as he relentlessly and continuously beats this man into submission. He doesn’t relent even when the two of them get pushed outside by the bar’s other patrons. Even after she and a few others are screaming at him to stop. To stop before he kills the man whose blood is already staining his knuckles.

  
      Kate never wants to seem him like that again.

 

 

      So that’s why, hours later when they’re back in their room and he’s taking a shower, she packs her backpack with all of her meager belongings and leaves him a note saying she’s sorry.

  
      She’s twenty minutes down the desert road, walking backwards with her thumb out, when she sees headlights rapidly approaching from the direction of the minuscule town. It isn’t long before the sees its his car. She turns around so she doesn’t have to watch him get to her.

  
      Kate just keeps walking and tries not to flinch when she hears the car come to screeching halt a few feet behind her. It’s lights illuminating the dark desert around her.

  
      She turns around and watches him launch himself out the car, not even bothering to close the door behind him as he runs to her.

  
      “What the fuck, Kate? What the fuck?”

  
      He’s clearly waiting for an explanation, but she’s struck by how utterly destroyed he looks in this moment. Like a man watching whats left of the world crumble even further.

  
      After a few moments she finds her words. “I can’t do this anymore, Seth.”

  
      Seth looks as if he already knows what she’s going to say, but he asks his next question anyway. “What can’t you do exactly, Kate?”

  
      “All of it. You. I don’t know.” She turns around again so she doesn't have to look at his expression of agonized betrayal as she talks. “I just need to go.”

  
     She expects him to argue loudly and passionately; as vehemently as he beat the man outside the bar. But all he does is take in a ragged breath before quietly asking, “Where are you gonna go?”

  
     This surprised her enough to turn back around and she sees that he’s praying to the sky again, his shoulders once more shaking in the way that suggests laughter.

  
     He looks away from the sky and into her eyes. The sorrow she finds there feels like a punch to her stomach.

  
     Kate doesn’t even answer him. Just faces away from him and starts walking down the road again, trying to escape his pain. She can barely handle her own.

  
     She’s taken about four steps when he says, with pure supplication in his voice, “Kate, please don’t leave me. Please don’t.”

  
     Kate can’t bear the pain lanced in his every word so she tops and turns to look at him. She also can’t bear how his whole body seems to sag in relief when she does.

  
      She still hasn't spoken so he fills in the silence again. “I’m sorry for doing all the shit I do, okay? Just please don’t leave.”

  
      While that doesn't really address what made her run, while they still need to talk about that man and what he’d done to him; she still runs to him anyway. For how can she forsake him after the hell they’ve went through? How can she leave him to face the bleak world alone? She just can’t do that to him, no matter how scared for him she might be at sometimes. No matter what darkness may lurk in his soul.

  
      Seth’s arms automatically latch around her when she reaches him. He presses her so tightly into his chest she feels like he’s trying to absorb her into his soul. She feels his mouth press into her forehead, his lips warm against the cold of her skin.

  
      “I won’t leave.” Kate presses her cheek even more closely into his chest. “I will never leave you.”

  
      She sends this promise up into the stars in the form of a prayer, hoping something up there will help her keep it.


End file.
